


Grief is a Cuckoo That Sings to Me

by diabhals



Category: Original Work, The Sevenfold Throne
Genre: Gen, Revenge, Whump, aborted revenge, but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:22:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24526825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diabhals/pseuds/diabhals
Summary: In which Camille realises a hot poker isn’t the solution to all his problems
Kudos: 3





	Grief is a Cuckoo That Sings to Me

  
Tatian hasn’t said yes. But Tatian hasn’t said no, either, and he hasn’t made any attempt to hide Julien, not even bothering to lock the door. He doesn’t need to; the chains keep the crowned prince confined enough, mostly drifting in and out of fitful sleep. 

Lingering in the doorway, Camille watches, tries to bite down the hatred bubbling in his chest. His hips ache — they always ache, but this ache sits differently, an acidic kind of pain. A bodily memory: his mother dragging him down the stairs, you will come to dinner tonight, falling — Tatian belongs in this ache as well, but hazier. His words of comfort can’t soften the screams etched into Camille’s damaged socket, scraped in by the ball: _what have you done with our son?_

He remembers the first time his father took him riding after the accident. The pain had been blinding, but he still wanted to please his father, smiling through tears, clinging on to that bloody horse even though the sound of its hooves echoed through his injuries. He remembers, that was the last time his father smiled at him. 

That was the last time his parents loved him, and as much as Camille can say he hates them (he does, but it isn’t enough), he doesn’t need them (he doesn’t, he has Tatian, but it isn’t enough), his hips aren’t the only thing that aches. His heart does too, pulsingly, crying out for lost love. 

What right did Julien de Vere ever have to take that from him? What right does he have now to sleep, curled into a corner as if the wall will provide him some kind of comfort?

Tatian hasn’t said _yes_ , but Camille knows his husband, knows how careful he is. The absence of a no is good enough. 

He steps into the room, leaning his cane against the bed. Of course, Julien’s chains don’t stretch that far, keeping him confined to his corner, but taunted by those luxurious furs, silk-soft sheets, oceans of blankets and pillows. It’s only what he would’ve been used to at Chatelet Cœurcheval, but some part of Camille thinks — hopes — the glimmer of unattainable hope makes his situation all the more miserable. 

Still, Julien sleeps, I disturbed by Camille’s approaching footsteps. His breath comes in pitiful little gasps, ragged-edged and futile; if only that sound could evoke anything but concern in Camille’s chest, noticing how fever-sheened his skin is. 

_It’s what he deserves_ , says the pain in Camille’s hips, dull and unyielding. _It’ll just make him easier._

“Wake up.” Camille tests the command; he isn’t used to working so directly. Usually, his little flock stain their fleeces for him — only the ones he wants to see unravel completely get a personal touch. 

He isn’t expecting a response yet, much less Julien’s eyes snapping open, backing up against the wall. His mouth moves soundlessly, forming a word — _Camille_. 

Now he’s got this far, he’s suddenly at a loss for what to do. Words crawl up his throat like broken glass, cutting words, you ruined my life. _You crushed me, you made my parents hate me, you ruined my life so I’m going to ruin yours_. A tide of hurt threatens to overwhelm him, but he can’t afford to let himself drown. Not when Julien is still watching him, wary, still somehow regal with a collar around his neck. 

Glancing back at the bed, Camille has a sudden idea. He can’t crouch anymore, but he pulls up a chair, leaning back as if he can’t feel Julien’s terrified gaze. 

“Would like a proper rest?” Keeping his voice low, he remembers, _I was so hopeful. You built me up, you told me I was good. You didn’t stop me_. 

“Camille, I’m sorry—” Even now, even raw and scared, Julien’s voice his laden with a pity that makes something vicious in Camille’s chest flare. 

“ _Answer the question_.” For a moment, he strains to keep his voice civil, swallowing down his throatful of broken-glass words. Then he shifts back to calm, almost honeyed, leaning in until he can feel the heat radiating from Julien’s skin. “Do you want a proper rest, on that bed? With those _warm_ furs, that _soft_ mattress?”

Julien swallows, barely masking the pained exhalation that follows. 

“Yes. Please,” he murmurs, the second word tacked on clumsily, and this time Camille does get some paltry satisfaction from the fear in his eyes. 

“Good.” Reaching out, Camille almost cups Julien’s cheek, withdrawing the comfort at the last minute. You let me do it. You told me you’d keep me safe. “If you behave, I’ll let you.”

Now Julien’s eyes fill with confusion, apprehension. He tries to back away, but there’s nowhere to go, the wall keeping him at Camille’s mercy. 

_I’m going to enjoy this_ , Camille thinks, because he has to. He needs to. 

Tatian hasn’t been so cruel as to deprive Julien of warmth; despite the mountain chill biting at the window, there’s a fire crackling beside Camille, a poker sticking out of it. He reaches for it almost mechanically, realising his hand is trembling, the glowing tip wobbling. 

_You want this_. The voice isn’t coming from his hips anymore, but from his chest, a hollow, gaping pain. 

“Head up.” Julien does as he’s told. He’s shaking as well, a vein in his neck straining as he tilts his head up, exposing where the collar has begun to chafe at his warm, dark brown skin. All the while, his eyes are fixed on the poker, pupils expanding to velvety pools of fear. 

Camille brings the poker to Julien’s chest. Slowly, slowly; his breath is pent-up in his chest, unable to fill that hole but building, building, building, clamouring for a release —

As soon as the poker bites into his skin, Julien flinches away, a yelp of pain tearing from his lips. 

“No, no, none of that—“ Hooking a finger through the ring of Julien’s collar, Camille drags him forward. He can feel the shudder that rocks the crowned prince’s body, practically taste his delirious terror. Yet what he doesn’t feel is any kind of ease, any salving of his burning chest. Perhaps he just isn’t hurting him enough. Not as much as Julien hurt him. “No screaming, either. I want you absolutely quiet.”

“Camille, _please_ , I’m sorry—“ there’s that pity again, there’s that hot surge, _don’t you dare, don’t you—_

The poker bites into Julien’s skin again, rough, instinctual. He tenses, biting his lip against the pain, but he doesn’t scream. Doesn’t move away, only shakes, the smell of singed flesh filling air as Camille pulls the poker away. 

Staring at the burn he’s created, an angry stain now mingling with faded scars, Camille still feels no better. The hole in his chest gapes, a beast unfed, or at least — unsatisfied. 

_More_ , it whines, a pulsing in his fingers, the poker hot in his palm. _More, more. Make him understand._

“I used to look up to you,” Camille murmurs, allowing the poker to trace the collar. “I used to want to _be_ you.”

Julien shudders beneath him, the faintest whimper slipping past his defences. 

“I said, _none of that_.” Tugging the ring again, Camille drags the collar over raw, newly burnt skin. He should be relishing the show: Julien desperately biting his lip, tears welling up and spilling over, body trembling with the screams building inside him. “You let me put my name forward for that joust. You let me ride into that ring. You let me get crushed!”

With each spilling of hurt, he jabs the poker into a new place, hoping to feel better, to feel something other than lost, scared, hurt. Even seeing Julien undone, tear-stained, not even trying to resist anymore, only opens a deeper chasm in Camille’s chest. 

_He can’t breathe_ ; there’s nothing left to breathe with, only a hollow, a crack running right down Camille’s soul. _He can’t breathe_ , because his throat is full of broken glass and it hurts, it burns and scrapes through his vocal cords, leaving him dumb. Blind to the room, blind to Julien, feeling like he’s teetering on the edge of a precipice, clinging to normalcy with cracked fingernails. There’s shame there too, bubbling like bile in his stomach, shame that this is all he is: a broken, terrified, _hurting_ child. 

“ _Saints_ , why don’t you—“ Camille’s breath hitches, tears spilling over, the poker wobbling dangerously. “Why don’t you fight back? Why don’t you _scream_?” _Because you asked him not to_ , whispers that same, demanding voice, and now Camille screams, raw, frustrated. “Do you know what happened to me after you’d washed your hands of me? My parents wouldn’t look at me! They wanted the old me back. They wanted a son you killed!”

He’s still teetering, gasping through tears, chest burning with years of pain. Fumbling over the poker, Camille hears it crash to the floor, but the sound barely registers, fingers closing around thin air. 

“It’s your fault!” Nothing to hit with anymore, so he just punches him, wild, so giddy he misses the first time. Even watching Julien reel, gasping for breath, does nothing to close the gaping maw of anger and pain. 

Somewhere at the back of his mind, he knows what this is. _Grief_. A monster he’s nurtured for years, birthed prematurely but nursed back to full, roaring health by his pain. Somewhere in the back of of his mind, he registers that Julien has started coughing, shoulders shaking with the effort of suppressing a wrenching fit. But the thought is only a whisper, drowned out by the screaming monster, his mind-cuckoo: _more, more, more, more._

He has no more to give. No more anger, no more pain. Only exhaustion. 

Slumping forward, Camille shudders with sobs, hardly aware of Julien’s struggle for breath. After all this; he’s back where he started, still feeding that monster, letting it’s two-note song of anger and inadequacy ring in his ears. 

“This was supposed to make me feel better,” he chokes out, to nothing more than his own tear-blurred knees. 

The hands come from nowhere — or rather, a space beyond Camille’s awareness, tender, folding him into an embrace. 

Julien. 

Camille can still feel his abdomen spasming with coughs, eventually petering out into frantic, shallow breaths. The grief-cuckoo screeches its indignation, calling the comfort _pity_ , but by now he’s too drained to care. 

There’s a hand in his hair, rocking him gently as he cries against Julien’s shoulder. If it didn’t feel so wrong, it would almost be soothing, almost be enough to drown out that grating song. 

“I’m sorry, Camille.” Julien’s voice sounds far-off, painfully hoarse. “I mean it. I should’ve stopped you, I knew how dangerous it was, and I just — I let you do it, because I wanted to make you _happy_ —“

A breathless beat. 

“What I mean to say is, you’re right.”

Camille’s head snaps up. Only Tatian had said that to him, _you’re right, your pain is right._ He doesn’t want to accept it, but — he’s tired. Tired of anger, tired of grief, tired of it all, every corroding drop in a river of pain. A river that’ll never completely run dry, no matter how many dams he builds. 

As bitter as it is, he feels a little lighter, sobs beginning to recede into wobbly breaths. A headache grumbles behind his eyes, but for one blessed moment, his mind-cuckoo is silent. 

Slipping out of Julien’s embrace, Camille’s shaky, done — though he isn’t teetering anymore. He knows where he stands, and it’s on solid ground. 

Only now does he glance back at Julien, still kneeling, arms dropping to his sides with a kind of numb detachment. Camille’s eye immediately goes to the burns, pink and livid; the skin around them is slick with sweat, wracked by pathetic little shivers. Pity, then, can work both ways, because he realises it’s the emotion settled uncomfortably on his shoulders, telling him Julien needs rest, probably a physician. 

There’s a power in pity. Even more than in dealing out pain, there’s a power in shoving the poker back into the fire, knowing he could turn it on Julien at any moment but he won’t, because —

The voice beyond the cuckoo scream says the pain will never leave, not truly. His hips will always ache, worse as he stands; his chest will always be at least one fifth hollow. But the same voice insists he won’t find any healing with the poker. 

“You held up your side of the bargain,” he says, kindness coming clumsily. Julien glances up, at first disbelieving. Then he collapses in relief, fearful tension dissipating. 

Camille pulls a key from his doublet, unlocking the chains. Clink, clink, they fall away — and he doesn’t feel like he’s made a mistake. 

Falteringly, Julien stumbles to his feet, lurching forward as his legs almost give way beneath him. He’s unsteady as a newborn foal; Camille finds himself having to put a hesitant hand on his arm, steering him towards the bed. 

“Thank you,” he murmurs, over and over again as he all but collapses onto it, nuzzling into the furs. “Thank you, I’m sorry—“

What can Camille say? He can’t just accept the apology, some part of him clinging to his hatred of Julien de Vere, the arrogant, dazzling crowned prince — but another part of him can muster at least pity, if not something softer, for Julien who’d held him, told him he was right to be a grey. 

“Sleep.” Is all he can come up with, collecting his cane from the side of the bed. All they’ve done is change the field of war; many more battles are brewing, he knows, the mind-cuckoo starting to whine again. Yet — the stakes have been lowered. Fight to hurt, not to maim. 

Perhaps they could reach a truce one day. 


End file.
